The PRRR™ Control Model
Prevent, Respond, Recover, Review. A structured way to manage psychosocial risk as what it is: a risk created by the way work is designed, organised and managed.
Prevent
Identify psychosocial hazards, understand exposure, assess risk, and eliminate or minimise it through effective controls and work design.
Respond
Recognise emerging risk, respond to reports and incidents, escalate concerns and deal with controls that have failed.
Recover
Support appropriate recovery, workplace adjustments and a sustainable return to work when harm has occurred.
Review
Monitor exposure, verify that controls are effective, learn from incidents and drive continual improvement.
Review feeds back into Prevent: controls are checked, corrected and improved continuously.
Control the work, not the worker
Psychosocial hazards come from the work: its demands, the control people have over it, the support available, how change is managed, how people are treated, and the conditions in which it is done. Harm follows exposure, and exposure is a property of the job long before it shows up in a person.
That puts the controls in the work too. Workload, rostering, resourcing, role clarity, reporting systems and supervision are where risk is created and where it is reduced. Training, policies and wellbeing programs have a place, but they cannot be the main way a workplace controls a hazard it could design out.
A control model, not a replacement for the law
PRRR™ organises the controls a workplace needs into four stages so that nothing is left to chance: controls that prevent exposure, controls that respond when something goes wrong, support for recovery, and review that proves the other three are working.
It sits inside your legally required risk management process; it does not replace it. You still identify hazards, assess and control the risks, consult your workers and review your controls as the WHS or OHS law in your jurisdiction requires. PRRR™ gives that work a consistent structure and a shared language from the front line to the owners.
What the packages focus on
- How work creates psychosocial exposure
- Work as imagined versus work as performed
- Organisational systems and control failures
- Effective consultation
- Workplace risk assessment
- The hierarchy of control
- Practical control measures
- Control ownership
- Critical controls
- Verification of effectiveness
- Governance and accountability
- Examples from mining, construction, manufacturing, local government, education and healthcare
Australian WHS and OHS laws are not identical. Victoria in particular has its own OHS Act and psychological health regulations, and officer duties take a different form there. The packages identify where requirements differ and point you to your regulator; they are not legal advice.